web analytics

JerseySmarts.com

Book Review: Dreyer’s English

Posted on by

Many years ago as an undergraduate, I was an English major, which means I spent a great deal of time reading the classics, writing critiques, and reviewing the finer points of the art of writing. Most of those finer points that I spent a untold hours (but quite told dollars) to learn are probably gone from my knowledge bank at this point. I don’t know because I can’t remember. I guess this means that I have a more relaxed writing style than some of my old professors may care for. Oh well. I certainly won’t find many arguments against a more relaxed, but disciplined writing style from Benjamin Dreyer. In his new book, Dreyer’s English, Dreyer goes over a whole host of writing rules that authors (aspiring, experienced, or otherwise) will find helpful, eye-opening, and – at times – potentially frustrating.

This is not to insinuate that Dreyer is incorrect in any of his suggestions, recommendations, or rules. Rather, this is to suggest that contemporary English has become so out of whack with the basic rules that we sometimes write in a piecemeal method akin to how Dr. Frankenstein built his monster (shout out to anyone who has read Dreyer’s English).

What struck me while reading this book was the fun, playful humor that Dreyer embeds into an otherwise dry, drab, sometimes angry subject. Some of you may recall your English classes as boring or dull or, worse, instructed by someone who was either of these two unfortunate descriptors. I’m glad to say that I did not have that experience (and thus, I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English). But I do feel for those of you who may have had poor instructors and now are plagued with a poor appreciation for the rules of our English language.

Perhaps my favorite part of the book – and a comment that I agree with – is that rules are made to be broken. Of course, you have to know the rules before you break them. I’m with Dreyer on that stance. Yes, go ahead and end a sentence with a preposition if you want to. However, be sure to know what the rules are around why some folks don’t like to have sentences end with a preposition.

For those of you who underwent a rigorous education in the grammatical arts, you’ll find Dreyer’s English to be a great refresher and also a fun trip down what I hope is a pleasant memory lane. For those of you who are not as familiar with the strange peculiarities that make up the English language, you might find this book to be filled with the rules and grammatical laws that have evaded you. Or a playful read. Or both. Whatever. (Another shout out to those who read the book and its fun footnotes.)

Just a final comment, while this book is a fun read and enjoyable for those of us who like linguistics, I was a bit disappointed at the unnecessary distraction added by the often awkward and off-topic insertion of the author’s politics. Early in the book, he takes a shot at the Bush family. Later, he uses Donald Trump, Jr., as an example in a rather derogatory way. He swipes at President Trump in a footnote that looks, feels, and reads laboriously crowbarred into the book. There are other awkward shots at anything not Democratic or left-of-center littered throughout the book including a bizarre footnote where he comments that he originally used the verb “trumps” in an example but he now has an aversion to using that verb. Frankly, it’s creepy for someone to see politics all around them, including in verbs. Break free, people. Don’t let politics run (ruin?) your life.

These types of unnecessary political distractions are awkward in a book about the English language. Of course, part of my frustration with politics being included is that I vehemently reject the politicization of everything in today’s society. The English language should not be politicized. Excess fall backs to political commentary is also why I followed and then, sadly, stopped following the author on Twitter.

The whole world doesn’t need to be political. And, this may be just me, but I’ve begun to become uninterested* in people who only see the world and all of its marvelous elements in shades of Democratic blue and Republican red. Do better, everyone.

*A third shout out to those who read the book. I am uninterested in those who see politics in all shades of life, even linguistics. This is because I am disinterested in politics. There’s a difference, as Dreyer explains.

That unhappy note aside, I’m a fan of this book and I appreciated the humor that Dreyer used in his writing. This was a fun read and as someone who never picks up a brand new book, I am glad that I broke with my historical book-buying approach and purchased this one. If you’re into the English language and its many oddities, then give Dreyer’s English a try. I think you’ll enjoy it!

Things I Might Have Done Differently If I Had a Magic Time Machine or Something

Posted on by

Unlike most people out there, I’m generally a very happy guy with no regrets in life. There are things I would have done differently here or there along the way, but I don’t regret any of the big (or small) decisions that I’ve made – and I think that’s something unique in today’s society which is plagued with moral relativism. When it comes to decisions, moral relativism tells people, “Go ahead – take a chance and do something crazy! You only live once, right?!” That mentality has some merit for inconsequential decisions like considering whether or not you want to try a new food, go on an adventurous trip/vacation, or take your hand at making a new friend or business connection. But all too often our society encourages people to apply that “you only live once” mentality to decisions that shouldn’t be defined by the moment, but rather by something deeper. This “something deeper” might be the wisdom of your family, the beliefs of your faith, or certain philosophical teachings that you deeply believe in and profess regularly.

Don’t think that you need to be an academic or an ultra emotive person to discover these particular guides in your life. You can find this guiding wisdom all over the place – if you look. You can find deep philosophical guidance in the words that a coach speaks to a player, in the intangible lessons on character that a teacher gives to a student, or even in the advice your doctor gives you about general health.

Guidance that is typically not warped by moral relativism is widely available – if you just look for it.

For me, I’m guided by lessons from my family and my faith and, in many ways, by my educational experiences. Being guided by those lessons allows me to make decisions in my life that I’m very comfortable with and that ultimately lead me to a life of no regrets – without the stupid “you only live once” attitude that the moral relativists encourage.

Yet, sometimes I consider whether I might have made different decisions in life and thus the creation of this blog entry. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, then these considerations certainly shouldn’t come as a surprise to you since they focus on my student loans, my health, my entrepreneurial exploits, and my education. You might consider the writing below the “lessons learned” from my experiences on these issues. I’m not sure if you’ll find this interesting, but here we go. Below are some of my personal thoughts about what I might have done differently if I had a magic time machine… or something!

Paying Back My Student Loans
My biggest financial accomplishment in the last 3 and a half years was repaying some $104 thousand of my $121 thousand in student loan debt. Today, I have enough money to repay the remaining $17 thousand, but since I’ll very likely be buying a home in the next few months I’ve opted not to give those funds to the government just yet. And that would be the first lesson learned in my ultra aggressive student loan repayment from the last 3 and a half years. Namely, I could have relaxed just a little bit with the repayment of my United States Department of Education Direct Loan to afford me a larger down payment for the home I’ll be purchasing. Along with maybe not being so aggressive in repaying my loans in the last year, if I could jump in a time machine I’d tell the 18, 19, 20, and 21 year old versions of myself to start repaying the loans while I was still in school. I was making decent money while I was in college. It would not have been a problem to make $300 – $500 payments each month while I was in school. That would have lowered the debt boom that I felt after I graduated from graduate school in 2006. Second lesson learned – begin repaying your student loans while you’re still a student, if you can… and you probably can.

Taking Out Student Loan Debt
This one goes hand-in-hand with the lesson learned above and is probably pretty obvious, but if I could jump into that time machine and go back to 1999 – 2003, I’d tell my younger self to not take out as much in student loan debt. Specifically, I would have dramatically reduced the amount of nonacademic student loan debt that I took out while I was both an undergraduate and graduate student. The job that I held the longest while I was a student was working for the landlord of the apartments that I lived in. When he initially offered me the job, he wanted to work a deal where I got paid a little bit less each week, but my rent would be free. I didn’t like the idea of losing money in my hand today but still working for it, so I took out additional student loan debt to make bulk rent payments twice each year. On average, I was paying about $600 per month in rent (it was a little bit less when I first started working there and a little bit more when I left). If you do the math, that’s $600 in rent each month multiplied by 12 months in the year equals $7,200 in rent each year… multiplied by the 3 or 4 years that I worked for the landlord equals… a lot of money that I didn’t have to take out in student loans. The lessons learned here is to take advantage of legitimate cost saving deals if they’re offered to you and try not to take out too much in living costs when you take out student loans.

Slowly Building Usable Web Solutions, LLC Instead of Attacking the Market
Switching of student loans and on to one of my entrepreneurial efforts – when I started Usable Web Solutions, LLC over 7 years ago, I took an aggressive approach to the local web development market in the northern shore area of Monmouth County. That aggressive approach paid off in the short-run with UWS generating nearly 50 clients in its first 2 years of operation. Let’s be honest – to generate nearly 50 clients in a company that I was really running part-time on the side without much effort is pretty damn impressive. One of my mistakes in building up those clients, though, was focusing on undercutting the existing web development and maintenance market. If a competitor was charging $3,000 to design a website, I’d charge $1,500. If they were charging $50 per month for maintenance and hosting, then I’d charge $30. Undercutting the market brought me clients, but it didn’t bring the tremendous amount of revenue that you would think comes along with that number of clients signing up in a short period of time. Also, I gave my nonprofit clients a discount, but I never actually marked that discount down in my official paperwork. That cost me quite a bit of money that I could have saved come tax season each year. The lessons learned here are to very carefully select the methods by which you attack a local market when starting a company and to be selective in the clients that you choose to work with in a start-up. Another lesson I learned was to do a little bit more research into the tax implications of discounts before offering them to your clients!

You Should Be Calling Me “Doctor” Right Now
The student loan and website stuff above and the other items you’ll read below are annoying. But the thing that really bites my ass is that I didn’t stay in school after I graduated from graduate school in 2006. Without question, I should have stayed in school and gotten my doctorate. Just to show you how close I was to getting one, the graduate program that I was in required 45 credits for a masters degree and 72 credits for a doctorate. You probably did the simple math and saw that I might have been 27 credits away from a doctorate – not correct. I graduated from the masters degree program with 54 credits, putting me 18 credits away from a doctorate. EIGHTEEN CREDITS. Want to know what’s worse? Since I graduated with masters degree, I’ve successfully completed a 15 credit graduate certificate program and I’m just about 6 credits into a post-masters certificate program. That’s 21 more credits on my academic resume… with no doctorate at the end because they were at a different academic institution than where I received the masters degree! You might think that the lesson learned here is to go back to my original graduate institution and finish the job and you’d be correct in a way. I’m not entirely sure that a doctorate in the same discipline that my masters degree is in is what I want to accomplish academically. Silly, right? The lesson learned here is that if you’re incredibly close to achieving an incredible goal, then focus your energy on achieving it!

And Then There Was The Weight Loss… And Gain
Ahhh… one of the reasons that I started writing this blog way back when was because I wanted to chronicle – in some form or another – the weight loss journey I was going on back in the early 2000s. After I graduated from college in May 2003, I was a big guy; probably logging in around 385 pounds. I don’t know exactly how my weight got to that point, but it did and I have horrible pictures to prove it. Then during the spring of 2004, my Father had some health trouble including a heart attack and stroke (neither of which impaired him at the time, thankfully) and a good friend of mine got married. In the wedding pictures, my big body takes up huge portions of each picture that I’m in. It was embarrassing. At the time, I knew that my Father’s health was deteriorating and that I wasn’t doing myself any favors socially by being that big of a guy so I resolved that my Father would see a healthier me before he died – and if there was a little bit more fun in my social life because of it, then that wasn’t a bad side effect. And then I ate less, worked out more, and lost a bunch of weight. To be exact, I lost 125 pounds in a year and reached 260 pounds – a weight that I hadn’t achieved since I was a wrestler in high school (and when I weighed that much while wrestling heavyweight in high school, I was pretty damn dominant). But the honeymoon didn’t last and I remember the exact day that the pendulum started swinging back in the other direction.

I was standing in my kitchen trying to figure out what to have for dinner. And some random flashes went through my mind of when I weighed 385 pounds and I would make a whole box of pasta, eat it with almost an entire jar of sauce, and drench it in different cheeses. During that flash, my taste buds went bonkers in my mouth because when I was 385 pounds, I thought that tasted good. And then something horrible reawakened in me and I made a whole box of pasta for dinner that night (with the sauce and the cheese and so on). As you might imagine, it made me sick. And getting sick allowed me to avoid the gym for a few days… which allowed me to continue eating some of the foods that I hadn’t had in over a year (candy, for example). And eating that stuff also got me sick… which, of course, led to missing more gym sessions. And the cycle back to gaining weight had begun. At some point when I crossed back over to 300 pounds, I sort of got that mental block in my head again that I couldn’t be healthy because it took too much time and effort (starting graduate school while working full-time didn’t help). Then I graduated from graduate school, got a new full-time job, my Father’s health deteriorated and I spent more time traveling to see him at the hospital, I spent more time building the website company on the side, I spent more time volunteering, etc, etc. And I gained back over 100 pounds. A few summers ago, my roommates and I had a weight loss contest that I should have won with no questions. I started the contest at 363.6 pounds and ended it weighing 314.6 pounds. Losing nearly 50 pounds didn’t win me the contest and over the course of the following months I gained most of that weight back. The lesson learned here? Well, there’s probably too many to list out and I’m sure each person has their own takeaway from this brief story, but the lesson that I learned is to not give up your successes so easily. Fight, damn it. And when you can’t stop the bleeding (metaphorically speaking), seek help. I didn’t have to regain those 125 pounds nearly a decade ago. There were people who would have helped me turn the tide back around in my favor, but I didn’t reach out and I regained much of that weight.

Writing More Often and More Thoroughly
This one is interesting because every few months/several times each year I hop onto this blog and write something like, “I’ve got a bunch of half-written entries that I’m working on for you, so stay tuned!” Meanwhile, if you are staying tuned, then you’re tuning into nothing. I mean how many entries have I even posted so far in 2013? This one makes 5, right? Pitiful. And yet, I find writing to be a very cathartic experience. It clears my mind of the craziness and hectic nature of my day-to-day working life and entrepreneurial efforts. Plus, I enjoy writing. I enjoy putting my fingers to work on this laptop and having something very tangible that is, I hope, of some higher level quality at the end of those efforts. In other words, writing allows the creative aspect of my personality to come out and take form. Although, when I write these blog entries I am keenly aware of trying to keep them short and sweet (not this one, obviously). Sure, sometimes you’ll read something that goes on and on (like this entry), but I would really enjoy writing more of these longer, extended entries so I can tell fuller, more thorough stories about my life, experiences, and thoughts on different issues. The lesson learned here is to make time for those things that soothe your mind and put your body at ease. For me, writing these entries accomplishes that goal and I should find more time to write fuller entries.

And there you go, folks. Those are some of the lessons that I’ve learned along the way and some of the things that I might have done differently. Thankfully, each of the setbacks or concerns that I’ve noted above were (and still are) easy to address in a head-on manner; or it is easy to overcome the unintended consequences of each of these items. There’s more to write about, of course, but if you read everything above, then you’ve just read the equivalent of an 8 page academic paper and sometimes you need to know when to call it quits and save some more for next time!

How Much Excess Notebook Paper is Hanging Around YOUR Old School Work?

Posted on by

For those of you out there on the interwebs who still have your high school or college paperwork laying around – when was the last time you looked at it? I have a double-wide milk crate that sits on a shelf in my closet and is filled with my college and graduate school notebooks and homework. While I typically don’t notice the milk crate sitting there on the shelf, every now and again I think to myself, “I have to dig through that thing one of these days.”

And last night was the night that I decided to dig through that milk crate.

All of the notebook paper that I did NOT use while I was in college... amazing.

Now some of you might wonder why I keep this old school work decided to dig through this milk crate. It’s simple. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, then you know that almost two years ago to the day I wrote an entry that talked about how I planned to use every disposable/short-term item in my possession before buying a new item of the same type. In other words, I don’t plan on buying any more blue or black ink pens until all of the pens at my disposal are used and gone. I don’t plan on buying any new highlighters or pencils until all of the ones that I currently have in my possession either run dry or run down to the eraser.

Why buy more of something that I have an abundance of already?

The picture above shows all of the excess notebook and loose leaf paper that I pulled out of my old college notebooks and random paperwork last night. I did this once before, but I only pulled out a few slices of paper (maybe 50 at most). However, once I had all of that old milk crate poured out on my bedroom floor last night, I figured that this was my chance to pull out all of the unused paper from the crate. And why pull out all of that unused, dusty paper?

To use it, of course!

Granted, I don’t have many uses for that paper in my at-home life. In fact, I’ve been working on depleting a stack of “scratch paper” that has been sitting on my bookshelf for the last two years. So I certainly don’t need to add to that pile. However, I’m going to bring that stack of unused college paper to my office and slap it on a clipboard to use when I go out for site visits to my clients or to take notes during in-office meetings.

Will it help prevent a tree from being chopped down somewhere on the planet? Maybe – I don’t know. But what I do know is that it makes a lot more sense to use the paper that I already have in my possession than to go out to Staples and buy a new pack of paper. Not only does that generate a greater need than is really needed, but it’s a waste of money.

So, what resources or items do you have laying around your house, closet, or storage unit that you don’t need to buy any more of any time soon? Take a look around. You might be surprised at what you find!

The Plan To Use Everything… EVERYTHING!

Posted on by

As my Mom can tell you, I have boxes upon boxes of plastic storage units that are sitting in both of the sheds in her backyard. About a year ago I was going through them and in the process I pulled out some stuff that, for some unGodly reason, I was “storing.” Among these items were a computer keyboard and some old pens, pencils, and markers.

I brought this stuff back with me to my home near the shore and when I got there, I immediately put the keyboard into a different storage area in my closet and I added the writing implements to a bucket of similar items. I’ve never been one to throw away items that still have some tangible use to them and I think that is a virtue. However, adding those extra pens and pencils to my bucket of pens and pencils got me to thinking about all of the stuff that we all probably have lying around in junk drawers or plastic bins or buckets, etc. How many of us have a bunch of old pens and pencils sitting around, but when we need something to write with we comment that we never have anything to use?

I bring up the brief story about bringing home pens, pencils, and a keyboard to comment on something that I’ve been trying to do for a few years now. When I started going to graduate school at Rutgers (which would be the spring semester of 2004), I realized that it made no sense for me to go out and buy new pens and notebooks and other things that you’d use in the classroom because I had leftovers from both college and high school. Seriously, who needs to go out and buy another notebook when you’ve probably only used 15 – 20 pages out of your last one or if you have sheets of loose leaf paper laying around? It’s insane the amount of resources that we all likely waste by not completely using all of the items that we purchase. Think of how much money you’ve probably spent on writing implements over the years when you had perfectly good ones lying around your home or office.

While these are “sustainable” and “environmentally-friendly” reasons to completely use the items that we purchase, there is another reason – it saves money! Why go out and spend even $2 or $3 on new pens when you have old ones sitting in a drawer? Why go spend $5 to $8 on notebooks when you have old pieces of paper that you can use? I’m currently taking a course in executive communication and the notebook that I’m using is an old black and white marble covered composition notebook from Mead that I purchased when I was in college. In the last ten years or so, I only used about 6 pages in that notebook. Just 6 pages! Talk about a waste…

And as a quick note – I’m not against going out and purchasing new stuff when it is needed. For example, the garbage can that I keep near the desk in my bedroom is broken and needs to be replaced. Sure, it gets the job done, but it’s broken and has a jagged edge. When I get a new garbage can, though, I’ll be sure to put this one in the recycling bin since it is made of plastic.

The pencil that I’m using to take notes during the executive communication class is probably older than some of the people reading this blog. I remember getting it in second or third grade and it has “Happy Thanksgiving” stamped across the side of it with a weird looking turkey and an odd pilgrim on either side. This is one of the pencils that had been sitting in my Mom’s shed for 10 to 15 years doing nothing. Sure, it’s a funny pencil, but it gets the job done and it is a bit of a conversation starter with my classmates (which usually starts with either, “Is that your kid’s pencil?” or “Does that say ‘Happy Thanksgiving’ on it?”).

The next time you think you need to go out and buy a pen or a pencil stop and think about whether or not you have a sufficient writing implement at home or in the office somewhere.

Are We Forced to Work Around the Clock?

Posted on by

Over the weekend I read an opinion editorial on CNN’s website that talked about the workaholic as he was known in the 1980’s/early 1990’s and today’s worker in a constantly connected world. The writer talks about a guy that he once knew named Robert Hyland who went to the office at 2:30am and stayed until 5:00pm. That’s a full 14 and a half hour day, folks.

However, the writer makes an interesting point:

E-mails and text messages and BlackBerrys and all their digital cousins may have given us the illusion of freedom — we tell ourselves that we are unfettered by traditional offices, that we can go anywhere we please — yet in the end they have created a nation of Robert Hylands. We’re never off the clock; that cell phone may ring at dinnertime, that allegedly urgent e-mail may arrive at 11 p.m., that instant message from the regional manager may pop onto the screen when we’re on vacation with our families.

Like almost everyone else who works in a professional setting these days, I have a way of accessing my e-mails from my “home office” (which consists of a desk in the corner of my bedroom and two bookshelves on the side of the desk). And the truth is that when I get home from work, aside from my Yahoo and Gmail e-mail accounts, I also open up my work e-mail account. On a typical day, there are two or three e-mails delivered to my work inbox during the hour long commute home. Sometimes those e-mails are urgent, but most of the time they aren’t pressing at all. Yet, I still have to look.

It’s the ease of the access that’s the problem; the fact that you can access this information in the blink of an eye and that, generally, the information contained in the e-mail can be processed quickly. That’s the problem. That’s why I check my work e-mail as soon as I get home and frequently while I’m at home.

The next big problem is the integration of BlackBerry phones and other smart phones into the work day. One of the reasons that I initially purchased my Treo 700p (the “p” stands for “piece of garbage”) was so that I could access my work e-mail from anywhere. However, once I realized that this meant I would always be connected to the office and once I realized that I essentially didn’t need a smart phone because I was never so far away from a computer that I couldn’t check my e-mail, I turned off the internet on my phone. Turning off the internet turns off the ability to be constantly connected.

However, I do find it interesting that with all of the advances in smart phone technology that I’m already planning for my next phone to be a BlackBerry. I’m on the Verizon Wireless network, but I refuse to pay Verizon Wireless for access to the internet when I already pay my cable company for access and when my office has wi-fi access. So I’m waiting for a wi-fi enabled BlackBerry phone to be available on the Verizon Wireless network before I get a new phone. In essence, I’m preparing to be constantly connected to the office when I really don’t want to be. But I digress…

Most of my co-workers are wrapped up into this “always connected” thing, too. It’s not uncommon for an e-mail to be sent after 5:00pm and for a response to come back around 8:30pm. Frankly, I think that it’s nice that some of the lagging issues that we deal with at the office can come to a conclusion after hours – after we’ve all had some time to process different solutions. However, I think we’ve all subconsciously begun to cut back on the amount of after hours work that we’re performing for the company.

And, honestly, cutting back on after hours work is probably the best thing for today’s worker. When you consider all of the stresses that are wrapped into simply having a job there is little reason to want to bring any of that back to your home with you. The home should and can be the refuge – if we let it.